American Politics Journal

POTUS gives SOTU
Tax Scheme is FUBAR, Probably DOA
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Jan. 30, 2002 -- MT. SHASTA (ZeppNEWS/APJP) -- I knew I was going to get some entertainment out of the State of the Union in the opening paragraph when Putsch, who is facing a massive scandal, a sagging economy, a blank spot where Osama was, more family disgrace, and a hostile Senate, declared that "the State of the Union has never been stronger."

This was something we noticed about Putsch during the campaign: when he's on the ropes, he transmogrifies into a moderate, and starts stealing Bill Clinton's lines. The "never been stronger" line was the same one Bill Clinton used in his 1999 SOTU -- with far more cause -- in front of a sour and embittered partisan Republican congress, which was still getting over being spanked in the impeachment fiasco and becoming the first opposition party to lose seats in the 6th year elections since the 1830s.

The markets were eager to hear the SOTU. The Dow, in anticipation, dropped 250 points. His family was behind him, and only one of them got thrown in jail today. And Cheney helped grease the skids with the Senate Democrats by calling Daschle and threatening him over the September 11th investigations.

Putsch, who was not visibly drunk and not wearing any more shiners, managed to get through the whole 48-minute speech without confusing Iraq -- apparently our next target -- with the USSR, or sending greetings to Tony Blair by saying, "Your brother is a pregnant termite" in Mandarin. Neither he nor Dick Cheney turned gray and sank to the floor. He would stop and take a calculating gaze around the room, always wearing his smirk, and then get back to the teleprompter and not deviate one inch from the flow of words that were contained therein.

By the undemanding standards of the GOP and the servile right wing media, the night was a glittering success for Putsch, and a humdrum exercise in tedium for the rest of us.

But when Putsch starts swiping Clinton's phrases, you know that the pink-and-fuzzy is about to flow.

Putsch is going to spend some time pretending to be a compassionate moderate, just like he did during the campaign, and the Republicans are going to wildly cheer such things as a 9% increase in government spending, a call to double the funding of Head Start, more money for public education, fair treatment for racial minorities, and religious tolerance. Watching Trent Lott and Tom DeLay gamely applauding such blasphemies was worth the price of admission. He even praised Ted Kennedy, an act that did not noticeably impress Kennedy and probably caused any number of right-wingers across the country to plotz.

But every once in a while, the Republican side would come through, as in when he advised Congress that they would have to control themselves on spending in order to help trim the deficits. Think about it -- this line came from a man who reduced revenues by $160 billion this year through an economically incompetent tax cut, and who just called for a nine percent increase in federal spending. You have to either be amazingly stupid, or believe your audience to be so afflicted, to come up with such a breathtaking piece of sanctimony and hypocrisy.

And the right wingers of the GOP, who already sacrificed states' rights to get him into office and isolationism to keep him there, watched him scrap more of their sacred cows for the benefit of the TV cameras. They kept gamely applauding.

He trotted out the puppet ruler they've installed in Afghanistan, along with the head of the ludicrous "Department of Women's Affairs" to show that it really was worth everyone's while for us to kill thousands of Afghanis by bombing their country and putting millions at risk of starvation.

The odd thing was that while he prattled on for some time about Afghanistan and "the war on terror," he never once mentioned Osama bin Laden by name.

I think that getting a puppet regime in Afghanistan was Putsch's top priority over the past three months, and he has about as much motive to hunt down bin Laden and make him pay for his crimes as OJ has in finding the real killer of Nicole Simpson.

In any event, Osama's name didn't come up. That would be like Winston Churchill discussing the war in Europe without mentioning Hitler.

The other Interesting Omission in tonight's speech was the word "Enron". Putsch expressed the vague and genial hope that corporations would be more careful in keeping themselves accountable to their shareholders and customers, but clearly believes that through some magic prestidigitation by the Invisible Hand, noble business leaders in search of profits are put above mere greed and venality. Remember, kids: it isn't greed if you make a lot of money from it. And it isn't stealing if you steal enough.

Other items that didn't get mentioned included:

Pretzels

Fraudulent prescriptions

Bradycardia

Baxter

...but nobody was expecting Putsch to mention, or even be aware of, most of them.

On a whim, I watched the ABC coverage. It was the usual right-wing study in servility, with the commentators gushing about the supposed 83% "approval rating" in the polls, and swearing that because Putsch is so "approved", Democrats would be cheering Putsch just as loudly as Republicans.

Well, they weren't. They applauded the various appeals to patriotism and love of the common man, because that's what politicans do, and mostly sat on their hands. Everyone once in a while, Hillary or someone would nod emphatically when Putsch brought out the pink fuzzies and started talking about Head Start or doubling the size of the Peace Corps (that's right -- he actually called for that -- Jesse Helms aged five years on the spot).

At another point he said, "I would like to mention a lady whose courage, character, calmness, and wisdom...blah, blah, blah..." In a big surprise ending, he was supposed to point and say, "My lovely wife, um, Loren, no Laura Bush!" The only trouble is, ABC trained their cameras on her before he even said the words, "I would like".

Give Sam Donaldson and the rest credit: when it comes to following the script, they are among the best the Republicans have to offer. But they gotta work on their timing, and not scurry so hard to please the boss.

As was the case with the old Premiers of the Soviet Union, you have to read between the lines to guess at what's really going on and actually being said.

My take on it was this: Iraq is our next target, so we're going to de-emphasize Osama bin Laden and build up Saddam Hussein as Satan-of-the-Week. Not that either of them are what you would call nice guys, but they will be serviceable villains to favor Putsch's well-tempered days, as Shaxbard once said.

Putsch expects a major fight in Congress and is dangling goodies in front of the Democrats in the hope of reaching some compromises. That's why the pink fuzzies.

And he's scared to death of what Enron might do to the rest of his term. With good reason.

Still, let's give credit where credit is due: in one way, he did better than Clinton: he only spoke for 48 minutes.